Cell-based drug delivery; a new trend in personalized medicine

Personalized medicine is an emerging approach to patient care based on individual characteristics that guide clinical decisions for the right treatment for the right patient at the right time[1]. In most approaches, personalized medicine requires time and cost severity to find out individual characteristics such as genetic profiling to achieve successful treatment [2, 3]. However, cell-based drug delivery offers a promising alternative; especially the use of synthetic biology in reprogramming cells and production of therapeutic products[3]. Cell-based drug delivery is one of the approaches to the drug delivery system which includes encapsulation of drugs inside the cells or attached to the cell surface and genetic engineering of cells to secrete therapeutic molecules[4, 5].Various cells could be involved including; RBC, dendritic cells, tumor cells and stem cells[6]. RBC drug acceptability in the form of encapsulation of drugs into RBC or attached to the surface. in fact, provide an elegant means of personalized medicine; using a patient’s own RBC for drug delivery[4]. Patient s own DCs can be used for development of cancer treatments. In fact DCs are loaded with tumor-associated antigens ex vivo or genetically engineered[5]. An alternative cell-based drug delivery involves transduction of cells with genes to achieve a constant production of therapeutic products including; tumor cells and stem cells [4, 5]. Advantage of this approaches include biocompatible, targeting properties and reduced immunogenicity using the patient s own cells to improve treatment [3-5]. Advances in personalized medicine to engineer patient’s own cells could lead to maximize therapeutic efficacy and minimize side effects [1, 3].

Keywords:

Drug delivery , Personalized medicine , Synthetic biology , RBC , Dendritic cells , Tumor cells , Stem cells , Cancer treatment